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THE USAGE PANEL

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12. Deserving of, indicating, or incurring censure or dishonor:“Man ... has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands” (Rachel Carson).

13. Wearing clothing of the darkest visual hue:the black knight.

14. Served without milk or cream:black coffee.

15. Appearing to emanate from a source other than the actual point of origin. Used chiefly of intelligence operations:black propaganda; black radio transmissions.

16. Disclosed, for reasons of security, only to an extremely limited number of authorized persons; very highly classified:black programs in the Defense Department; the Pentagon's black budget.

17. Chiefly BritishBoycotted as part of a labor union action.

n.

1.

a. The achromatic color value of minimum lightness or maximum darkness; the color of objects that absorb nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; one extreme of the neutral gray series, the opposite being white. Although strictly a response to zero stimulation of the retina, the perception of black appears to depend on contrast with surrounding color stimuli.

b. A pigment or dye having this color value.

2. Complete or almost complete absence of light; darkness.

3. Clothing of the darkest hue, especially such clothing worn for mourning.

4. alsoBlack

a. A member of a racial group having brown to black skin, especially one of African origin.

b. An American descended from peoples of African origin having brown to black skin; an African American.

5. Something that is colored black.

6. Games

a. The black-colored pieces, as in chess or checkers.

b. The player using these pieces.

7. The condition of making or operating at a profit:worked hard to get the business back into the black.

v.blacked, black·ing, blacks

v.tr.

1. To make black:blacked their faces with charcoal.

2. To apply blacking to:blacked the stove.

3. Chiefly BritishTo boycott as part of a labor union action.

v.intr.

To become black.

Phrasal Verb:

black out

1. To lose consciousness or memory temporarily:blacked out at the podium.

2. To suppress (a fact or memory, for example) from conscious recognition:blacked out many of my wartime experiences.

3. To cover or make illegible with black marking:The names in the document had been blacked out.

4. To prohibit the dissemination of, especially by censorship:blacked out the news issuing from the rebel provinces.

5. To extinguish or conceal all lights that might help enemy aircraft find a target during an air raid.

6. To extinguish all the lights on (a stage).

7. To cause a failure of electrical power in:Storm damage blacked out much of the region.

8. To suppress the broadcast of (an event or program) from an area:blacked out the football game on local TV stations.

[Middle Englishblak, fromOld Englishblæc; see bhel-1 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

American actress and public official. As Shirley Temple she was an immensely popular child actress of the 1930s, starring in films such as Bright Eyes (1934). As an adult she held several diplomatic positions, including ambassador to Ghana (1974-1976).

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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